In 1990, the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture (CAT), codifying a global commitment to refrain from transferring any person to a country where she may face torture. While the United States has steadfastly implemented the convention’s prohibition on deportations that result in foreign torture, American courts have failed to enforce CAT in cases involving international extradition, in which the United States transfers an American to a foreign country for criminal prosecution. In these cases, the Secretary of State alone decides, subject to little or no judicial review, whether the foreign country is likely to torture the American.

This Note assesses the three-way split that has developed across American courts in the thirty-one years since the United States signed CAT. It asks whether, how, and when courts should review the Secretary’s decision to extradite an individual who claims the extradition would violate the convention. In doing so, this Note identifies two concerning government practices it terms extradition shopping and extradition shuffling. It also connects habeas review in extradition to the immigration context, arguing that the Supreme Court’s recent interpretations of the habeas writ in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam and Nasrallah v. Barr may bolster the case for substantive habeas review of extradition claims. It concludes that habeas courts can, and should, review extradition decisions for compliance with CAT, offering a three-pronged theory of habeas jurisdiction rooted in the common law writ of habeas, in extradition statutes, and in CAT itself.

* J.D. Candidate, Stanford Law School, 2021. My deepest gratitude to Professors Beth Van Schaack, Daniel Birk, Diego Zambrano, Jayashri Srikantiah, David Sklansky, and Stephen Vladeck for their guidance and comments, and to Charles Tyler and Amanda Zerbe for their feedback. I am also immensely grateful to the Stanford Law Review editorial team: Ariella Park, Samuel Ward-Packard, William Janover, Azeezat Adeleke, Sarah DeYoung, Danielle Roybal, Daniel Khalessi, Schuyler Atkins, Tim Rosenberger, Leslie Bruce, Christian Soler, Samantha Noh, and Jenn Teitell.